Arsenal ultimately endured a difficult 2024/25 season under Mikel Arteta, failing to achieve their objective of winning a major honour.
The Gunners finished second in the Premier League, missing out on the title by ten points to Liverpool.
Meanwhile, Paris Saint-Germain knocked Arsenal out of the Champions League at the semi-final stage, beating the North Londoners 3-1 on aggregate in an enthralling tie.
Calls for Arteta to lose his job have surfaced in some quarters, although the Spaniard arguably did well to sustain any sort of title charge given the injury issues he had to contend with.
What Opta’s supercomputer predicted for Arsenal at the start of the 2024/25 season
Arsenal had numerous injury problems in the 2024/25 season, with the likes of Gabriel Magalhaes, Martin Odegaard, Gabriel Jesus, Bukayo Saka, Ben White, Mikel Merino, Riccardo Calafiori and Kai Havertz all spending multiple months on the sidelines.
Despite this, Arteta was able to keep his team relatively competitive in the league, as well as leading the North London club on their greatest run in the Champions League since 2009.
He did all this despite the odds at the beginning of the campaign indicating that they had little chance of winning the Premier League title anyway.
Opta Analyst’s supercomputer gave Arsenal just a 12.2% chance of claiming the piece of silverware that has eluded them since 2004.
The computer revealed that the Gunners’ most likely league finish was second, with a 48.8% chance of this outcome, meaning Arteta ultimately met the scientific expectations for his side.
Opta’s engine gave Arsenal just a 1.8% chance of finishing outside the top-five, meaning if they had somehow slipped out of the Champions League places in the final stages of the season, it certainly would’ve been a disaster.
While Arteta can take some solace from the fact that the odds were stacked against his team from the start, he’ll still be disappointed by the way things panned out, particularly given the side who were overwhelming favourites on Opta’s model didn’t win the title.
Who were the Opta Analyst’s supercomputer’s favourites for the Premier League title?
Opta’s supercomputer gave Manchester City an 82.2% chance of winning the Premier League title, while eventual winners Liverpool were given just a 5.1% chance of claiming the trophy at the start of the season.
The Merseysiders were tipped to finish third (40.2%), while Chelsea and Newcastle were given 0.2% and 0.1% chances at the title, respectively.
Meanwhile, Manchester United’s eventual 15th-place finish was given just a 1.2% chance at the beginning of the campaign, while Tottenham finishing 17th was rated at just 0.4%.
Opta had Arsenal’s lowest feasible finish as eighth, with this outcome given just a 0.2% chance, while seventh was rated at 0.6%.
Given the Gunners only ended up finishing nine points above seventh, they weren’t far from it being deemed a disastrous campaign based on what had been expected of them.
Receive a digest of our best Arsenal content each week direct to your mailbox
